Hollow Earth
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The Hollow Earth is a concept proposing that the planet Earth is entirely hollow or contains a substantial interior space. Notably suggested by Edmond Halley in the late 17th century, the notion was disproven, first tentatively by Pierre Bouguer in 1740, then definitively by Charles Hutton in his Schiehallion experiment around 1774.
It was still occasionally defended through the mid-19th century, notably by John Cleves Symmes Jr. and J. N. Reynolds, but by this time it was part of popular pseudoscience and no longer a scientifically viable hypothesis.
The concept of a hollow Earth still recurs in
History
This section needs additional citations for verification. (August 2022) |
Ancient times
In ancient times, the concept of a subterranean land inside the Earth appeared in
According to the
In
In Hindu mythology, the underworld is referred to as
Natives of the Trobriand Islands believe that their ancestors had come from a subterranean land through a cavern hole called "Obukula".[11] Mexican folklore also tells of a cave in a mountain five miles south of Ojinaga, and that Mexico is possessed by devilish creatures who came from inside the Earth.[12]
In the
In
16th to 18th centuries
The notion was proposed by
It is often claimed that mathematician Leonhard Euler proposed a single-shell hollow Earth with a small sun (1,000 kilometres across) at the center, providing light and warmth for an inner-Earth civilization, but that is not true. Instead, he did a thought experiment of an object dropped into a hole drilled through the center, unrelated to a hollow Earth.[25]
19th century
In 1818,
Though Symmes himself never wrote a book on the subject, several authors published works discussing his ideas. McBride wrote Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres in 1826. It appears that Reynolds has an article that appeared as a separate booklet in 1827: Remarks of Symmes' Theory Which Appeared in the American Quarterly Review. In 1868, professor W.F. Lyons published The Hollow Globe which put forth a Symmes-like Hollow Earth hypothesis, but failed to mention Symmes himself. Symmes's son Americus then published The Symmes' Theory of Concentric Spheres in 1878 to set the record straight.
In 1864, in Journey to the Center of the Earth[28] Jules Verne describes an expedition into the Earth's interior via the fictional Icelandic volcano Scartaris. The protagonists do not actually reach the centre, but nevertheless discover a subterranean ocean inhabited by creatures believed extinct. They escape through another volcano on the Italian island of Stromboli.
20th century
An early 20th-century proponent of hollow Earth, William Reed, wrote Phantom of the Poles in 1906. He supported the idea of a hollow Earth, but without interior shells or the inner sun.
The spiritualist writer Walburga, Lady Paget in her book Colloquies with an unseen friend (1907) was an early writer to mention the hollow Earth hypothesis. She claimed that cities exist beneath a desert, which is where the people of Atlantis moved. She said an entrance to the subterranean kingdom will be discovered in the 21st century.[30]
Marshall Gardner wrote A Journey to the Earth's Interior in 1913 and published an expanded edition in 1920. He placed an interior sun in the Earth and built a working model of the Hollow Earth which he patented (U.S. patent 1,096,102). Gardner made no mention of Reed, but did criticize Symmes for his ideas. Around the same time, Vladimir Obruchev wrote a novel titled Plutonia, in which the Hollow Earth possessed an inner Sun and was inhabited by prehistoric species. The interior was connected with the surface by an opening in the Arctic.
The explorer
Novelist
According to the
A book by "Dr.
The science fiction pulp magazine Amazing Stories promoted one such idea from 1945 to 1949 as "The Shaver Mystery". The magazine's editor, Ray Palmer, ran a series of stories by Richard Sharpe Shaver, claiming that a superior pre-historic race had built a honeycomb of caves in the Earth, and that their degenerate descendants, known as "Dero", live there still, using the fantastic machines abandoned by the ancient races to torment those of us living on the surface. As one characteristic of this torment, Shaver described "voices" that purportedly came from no explainable source. Thousands of readers wrote to affirm that they, too, had heard the fiendish voices from inside the Earth. The writer David Hatcher Childress authored Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth (1998) in which he reprinted the stories of Palmer and defended the Hollow Earth idea based on alleged tunnel systems beneath South America and Central Asia.[38]
Hollow Earth proponents have claimed a number of different locations for the entrances which lead inside the Earth. Other than the North and South poles, entrances in locations which have been cited include: Paris in France,
Variations
In "A Culture of Conspiracy", Political scientist Michael Barkun draws a distinction between the terms hollow earth and inner earth, to differentiate materials that conceive the majority of the interior of the planet to be hollow, from those that view it as solid but honeycombed with interconnected spaces.[44][45][46]
Concave Hollow Earths
Instead of saying that humans live on the exterior surface of a hollow planet, sometimes called a "convex" Hollow Earth hypothesis, it is hypothesized humans live on the interior surface. This has been called the "concave" Hollow Earth hypothesis or skycentrism.
Cyrus Teed, a doctor from upstate New York, proposed such a concave Hollow Earth in 1869, calling his scheme "Cellular Cosmogony".[47] Teed founded a group called the Koreshan Unity based on this notion, which he called Koreshanity. The main colony survives as a preserved Florida state historic site, at Estero, Florida, but all of Teed's followers have now died. Teed's followers claimed to have experimentally verified the concavity of the Earth's curvature, through surveys of the Florida coastline making use of "rectilineator" equipment.
Several 20th-century German writers, including Peter Bender, Johannes Lang, Karl Neupert, and Fritz Braut, published works advocating the Hollow Earth hypothesis, or Hohlweltlehre. It has even been reported, although apparently without historical documentation, that Adolf Hitler was influenced by concave Hollow Earth ideas and sent an expedition in an unsuccessful attempt to spy on the British fleet by pointing infrared cameras up at the sky.[48][49]
The Egyptian mathematician Mostafa Abdelkader wrote several scholarly papers working out a detailed mapping of the Concave Earth model.[50][51] In his book On the Wild Side (1992), Martin Gardner discusses the Hollow Earth model articulated by Abdelkader. According to Gardner, this hypothesis posits that light rays travel in circular paths, and slow as they approach the center of the spherical star-filled cavern. No energy can reach the center of the cavern. A drill, Gardner says, would lengthen as it traveled away from the cavern and eventually pass through the "point at infinity" corresponding to the center of the Earth. Gardner notes that "most mathematicians believe that an inside-out universe, with properly adjusted physical laws, is empirically irrefutable". Gardner rejects the concave Hollow Earth hypothesis on the basis of Occam's razor.[52]
Purportedly verifiable hypotheses of a Concave Hollow Earth need to be distinguished from a thought experiment which defines a
Contrary evidence
Schiehallion experiment
In 1735, Pierre Bouguer and Charles Marie de La Condamine chartered an expedition from France to the Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador. Arriving and climbing the volcano in 1738, they conducted a vertical deflection experiment at two different altitudes to determine how local mass anomalies affected gravitational pull. In a paper written a little over ten years later, Bouguer commented that his results had at least falsified the Hollow Earth Theory. In 1772, Nevil Maskelyne proposed to repeat the same experiment to the Royal Society. Within the same year, the Committee of Attraction was formed and they sent Charles Mason to find the perfect candidate for the vertical deflection experiment. Mason found the Schiehallion mountain, where the experiment took place and not only supported the earlier Chimborazo Experiment but yielded far greater results.
Seismic
The picture of the
Gravity
Another set of scientific arguments against a Hollow Earth or any hollow planet comes from
Based upon the size of the Earth and the force of gravity on its surface, the average density of the planet Earth is 5.515 g/cm3, and typical densities of surface rocks are only half that (about 2.75 g/cm3). If any significant portion of the Earth were hollow, the average density would be much lower than that of surface rocks. The only way for Earth to have the force of gravity that it does is for much more dense material to make up a large part of the interior. Nickel-iron alloy under the conditions expected in a non-hollow Earth would have densities ranging from about 10 to 13 g/cm3, which brings the average density of Earth to its observed value.
Direct observation
Drilling holes does not provide direct evidence against the hypothesis. The deepest hole drilled to date is the Kola Superdeep Borehole,[56] with a true vertical drill-depth of around 12 km (7.5 mi). However, the distance to the center of the Earth is nearly 6,400 km (4,000 mi).[57]
In fiction
The idea of a hollow Earth is a common element of fiction, appearing as early as Ludvig Holberg's 1741 novel Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum («Niels Klim's Underground Travels»), in which Nicolai Klim falls through a cave while spelunking and spends several years living on a smaller globe both within and the inside of the outer shell.
Other notable early examples include
In William Henry Hudson's 1887 romance, A Crystal Age, the protagonist falls down a hill into a Utopian paradise; since he falls into this world, it is sometimes classified as a hollow Earth story; although the hero himself thinks he may have traveled forward in time by millennia.
The idea was used by
In recent decades, the idea has become a staple of the science fiction and adventure genres across films (
The Hollow Earth is a key location in
In popular art
In 1975, Japanese artist
See also
- Dyson sphere
- Earth's inner core
- Expanding Earth
- Flat Earth
- Hades
- Hollow Moon
- List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
- Scientific skepticism
- Shellworld
- Travel to the Earth's center
- Xibalba
- List of Hollow Earth proponents
Citations
- ^ Hollow Earth in the Puranas Online
- ^ ISBN 0-385-12794-4
- ^ Sherwood Fox, William (1916), Greek and Roman, vol. 1, Boston, Marshall Jones Company, p. 143
- ^ Mircea Eliade, Zalmoxis, the vanishing God: comparative studies in the religions and folklore of Dacia and Eastern Europe, 1959, pp. 24–30
- ^ Myth: its meaning and functions in ancient and other cultures, G. S. Kirk, 1970, p. 136
- ^ John A MacCulloch, Celtic Mythology, Rowman & Littlefield Pub Inc, 1932, pp. 125–26
- ^ T. Write, Saint Patrick's Purgatory : A medieval Pilgrimage in Ireland, 1918, p. 107
- ^ Harold Bayley, Archaic England: An Essay in Deciphering Prehistory from Megalithic Monuments, 1919 Online Edition: Link
- ^ Angami NagaBrown, Account of Munnipore, 1968., p. 113
- ^ Ellen Russell Emerson, Indian Myths, 1965 "It is to the Cubans we are indebted for the following version of man's origin: It was from the depths of a deep cavern in the earth that mankind issued."
- ^ Philip Freund, Myths of Creation; 1965, pp. 131–32
- ^ George, Wally –"Pilgrimage To The Devil"., Article in Fate magazine, Aug. 1957, pp. 38–52
- ^ Clark B Firestone and Ruth Hambidge, The Coasts of Ilusion, Harper & Bros; First Edition, 1924
- ^ Martha Warren Beckwith, Mandan-Hidatsa myths and ceremonies, G. E. Stechert, 1937, p. 10
- ^ Grenville Goodwin, Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache, 1939, p. 20 (Kessinger Publishing have reprinted the book in 2011)
- ^ William Martin Beauchamp, Iroquois folk lore: gathered from the Six Nations of New York, I. J. Friedman, 1965, pp. 152–153
- ^ Pages from Hopi history, Harry Clebourne James, University of Arizona Press, 1974, Chapter 6
- ^ Arizona and the West, Volume 17, University of Arizona Press., 1975, p. 179
- ^ Harold Osbourne, South American Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1986, pp. 42, 119
- ISBN 978-0-415-97460-8.
- ^ Halley, Edmond, "An Account of the cause of the Change of the Variation of the Magnetic Needle; with an Hypothesis of the Structure of the Internal Parts of the Earth", Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London, No. 195, 1692, pp. 563–578
- ^ Halley, Edmond, "An Account of the Late Surprizing [sic!] Appearance of the Lights Seen in the Air, on the Sixth of March Last; With an Attempt to Explain the Principal Phaenomena thereof", Philosophical Transactions of Royal Society of London, No. 347 (1716), pp. 406–28
- ^ Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, Volumes 1–2, Albert S. Gatschet, Ams Pr Inc, 1969
- ^ The Franco-American Review, Volumes 1–2, the Yale University Press, 1938, p. 111. Also see The Venus Calendar Observatory at Aztec New Mexico, Allan Macgillivray III, 2010, p. 25
- ^ Sandifer, Edward (April 2007). "Euler and the Hollow Earth: Fact or Fiction?" (PDF). The Mathematical Association of America. pp. 209–214. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
- ^ "Hollow Earth Monument | Atlas Obscura: John Symmes Hollow Earth monument". atlasobscura.com. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ Simon, Matt. "Fantastically Wrong: The Real-Life Journey to the Center of the Earth That Almost Was". Wired. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
- ^ "Jules Verne – Voyage au centre de la Terre – Chapitre 30. - Translation (French – English) – WebLitera – library of translations". 31 March 2024.
- ISBN 0-7873-1192-8
- ^ Paget Walburga, Colloquies with an unseen friend, William Rider & Son., London, 1909, p. 36
- ^ Ferdynand Ossendowski (1922). Beasts, Men and Gods. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company.
- ^ George & Helen Papashvily, – Anything Can Happen., Harper & Bros., New York, NY., 1940
- ^ Cave of the Ancients, Lobsang Rampa, Random House, 1993
- ^ There are Giants in the Earth, Michael Grumley, Panther Books, 1976, pp. 42–47
- ISBN 0-8065-1070-6
- ISBN 978-1-84511-451-0.
- ISBN 978-1559500159
- ISBN 978-0932813633
- ^ Alien races and Fantastic Civilizations, Serge Hutin, Berkeley Medallion Books, 1975, pp. 109–132 – In the Bowels of the Earth: Refers to the mysterious catacombs beneath Paris, and other underground mysteries which lead inside the Earth.
- ^ The Under-People, Eric Norman, Award Books, 1969
- ISBN 1-60611-036-5
- ^ Chinese ghouls and goblins, G Willoughby-Meade, Stokes co, 1929
- ^ Mysteries of Ancient South America, Harold T. Wilkins, Citadel Press.', New York, 1956
- ISBN 0-520-23805-2.
- ISBN 9781559500159.
- ISBN 9780534011536.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ "Fantastically Wrong: The Legendary Scientist Who Swore Our Planet Is Hollow | WIRED". Wired. wired.com. 2014-07-02. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- Bibcode:1946PA.....54..263K. See pp. 277–78.
- ISBN 978-0-425-18992-4.
- ^ Abdelkader, M. (1983). "A Geocosmos: Mapping Outer Space Into a Hollow Earth". Speculations in Science & Technology (6): 81–89.
- ^ Notices of the American Mathematical Society, (Oct. 1981 and Feb. 1982).
- ^ On the Wild Side (1992), Martin Gardner, pp. 18–19
- ^ On the Wild Side, 1992, Martin Gardner.
- ISBN 978-0-7167-9617-6.
- ^ "The Interior of the Earth". pubs.usgs.gov. Retrieved 1 November 2015.
- ^ "What's At The Bottom Of The Deepest Hole On Earth?". 11 March 2016. Retrieved 2016-08-17.
- arXiv:1510.07674 [astro-ph.SR].
- ^ At the Earth's Core, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- ISBN 978-3-643-90228-3.
- ISBN 0-7894-4951-X.
General and cited references
- Kafton-Minkel, Walter. Subterranean Worlds. Loompanics Unlimited, 1989.
- Lamprecht, Jan. Hollow Planets: A Feasibility Study of Possible Hollow Worlds Grave Distraction Publications, 2014.
- Lewis, David. The Incredible Cities of Inner Earth. Science Research Publishing House, 1979.
- Seaborn, Captain Adam. Symzonia; Voyage of Discovery. J. Seymour, 1820.
- Standish, David. Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface. Da Capo Press, 2006.
External links
- What Curiosity in the Structure: The Hollow Earth in Science
- Library of Congress References
- Stories of a Hollow Earth Public Domain Review
- Skeptic Dictionary: Hollow Earth
- "Is Our Globe Hollow?", Scientific American, 13 July 1878, p. 20
- Marshall Gardner